After a week of non-stop headlines, the government’s preventative detention legislation passed the lower house, just in time for the end of the sitting year.
The new laws will allow former immigration detainees to be re-detained if they are judged to pose a high risk of committing serious violent or sexual crime.
The legislation comes after a 20-year legal precedent was overturned in November, when the High Court found the government could not detain people indefinitely – regardless of whether they had a criminal history.
